Monday, August 17, 2009

oversimplified to a fault for the purpose of illustrating the difference:

qualify - what kind?quantify - how much?

usually only one of these is used to measure something, but there are occasions when it is necessary to qualify AND quantify something. in these cases it is tedious to always spell out both words, so may i suggest

qualtify - how much of which kind?

a great example of a portmanteau, this word appears frequently in a liminary google search as a typo ("do i qualtify for this home loan?" "high qualtify speakers"), but i do not see any legitimate uses in the results.

3 comments:

wow, +5 for using a word of which google doesn't know the definition (it doesn't highlight liminary at the top right when searching for it). +100 more for using a word that merriam webster decided is a premium word (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/liminary)

wiktionary ended up being helpful, as well as my etymologically-based guess of being slightly "after" preliminary in meaning.